“I will make My covenant with you, and all flesh will never again be cut
off by the waters of a flood.”

“This is the sign of the covenant that I am placing between Me, you, and every
living creature that is with you, for all generations: I have set My rainbow
in the clouds... The rainbow will be in the clouds, and I will see it to
recall the eternal covenant.” (Gen. 9:11-16)

In what way does the rainbow symbolize God’s covenant, never again to destroy
the world by a flood? Why does the Torah emphasize that this rainbow is “in
the clouds”? And most importantly, what is the significance of this Divine
promise never again to flood the world? Does this imply that the Flood was unjust?
Or did God change His expectations for the world?

The rainbow is not just a natural phenomenon caused by the
refraction of light. The “rainbow in the clouds” represents a
paradigm shift in humanity’s spiritual development.

Pre-Flood Morality

Before the devastation of the Flood, the world was different than the world we know; it was younger
and more vibrant. Its physical aspects were much stronger, and
people lived longer lives. Just as the body was more robust, the intellect was also
very powerful. People were expected to utilize their intellectual powers as a
guide for living in a sensible, moral fashion. The truth alone should have
been a sufficient guide for a strong-willed individual. Ideally, awareness of
God’s presence should be enough to enlighten and direct one’s actions. This
was the potential of the pristine world of the Garden of Eden.

Rampant violence and immorality in Noah’s generation, however,
demonstrated that humanity fell abysmally short of its moral and spiritual
potential. After the Flood, God fundamentally changed the nature of ethical guidance
for the human soul. The sign that God showed Noah, the “rainbow
in the clouds,” is a metaphor for this change.

Greater Moral Guidance

The rainbow represents divine enlightenment, a refraction of God’s light, as
it penetrates into our physical world. Why does the Torah emphasize that
the rainbow is “in the clouds”? Clouds represent our emotional and
physical aspects, just as clouds are heavy and dark (the Hebrew word
geshem means both ‘rain’ and ‘physical matter'). The covenant of the
“rainbow in the clouds” indicates that the Divine enlightenment (the
rainbow) now extended from the realm of the intellect, where it existed
before the Flood, to the emotional and physical spheres (the clouds).
God’s rainbow of light now also penetrated the thick clouds of the
material world.

How was this accomplished? The Divine light became ‘clothed’
in a more physical form – concrete mitzvot. God gave to Noah the first
and most basic moral code: the seven laws of the Noahide code. These
commandments served to bridge the divide between intellect and deed,
between the metaphysical and the physical.

We can now understand God’s promise never again to flood the
world. After the Flood, a total destruction of mankind became
unnecessary, as the very nature of human ethical conduct was altered. Our
inner spiritual life became more tightly connected to our external physical
actions. As a result, the need for such a vast destruction of life, as
occurred in the Flood, would not be repeated. Of course, individuals — and
even nations — may still choose to sink to the level of
savages and barbarians. But the degree of immorality will never again
reach the scope of Noah’s generation, where only a single family deserved
to be saved.